


Source; target

by lejf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: ...maths??, Love Confessions, M/M, conceptual metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7857151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/pseuds/lejf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean thinks there's no room for love in their lives. </p><p>Sam disagrees. Obliquely. </p><p>Well— no. Not obliquely; he <i>blatantly</i> voices his disagreement, though through the conduit of math.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Source; target

“Number theory,” Sam said, excitement bleeding into his voice. Evening fell in around them, low light, the motel curtains drawn tight and keeping away the outside encroaching dark. The lamp between their beds was on, Dean working gear even when he was sitting up against the headrest and his bare legs were tucked beneath the blankets.

“No idea what that is, Sammy.” Dean said, thumbing at one of his gun’s barrels. “Sorry.”

“It’s–” Sam paused. “The study of real, positive numbers. Can you believe they have a whole branch on it? Math is so complex; you’ll find relations and inexplicable patterns everywhere, and when you prove them,” — Dean swore his eyes _lit_ up, brightened up the whole damn place — “there’re no words for it, Dean. It just all falls into place.” Like you and me.

“Math ain’t gonna serve you any good, Sam. No matter how pretty it is. You know how many monsters I killed with math? _None_.”

“No, no no no,” Sam said breathlessly, rolling over to look at him. He propped himself up on one elbow and stared over at Dean, sight bridging the gap between their beds. “Everything math is and everything it maps _all_ has its basis in the real world. Physics is all about that! Think about it, Dean—”

“I really don’t like math, man.”

“—There are amazingly complex and hidden relations. _Everywhere_.” Sam met his eyes then, and Dean nearly ducked away at the intensity of it.

The implications of that statement were best left undisturbed.

“Just listen to this: One of the biggest debates surrounding math is whether it’s discovered or created–”

“Well that’s a pretty stupid argument!” Dean flicked the gun, watched the metal catch the light. “What, they think the numbers one, two, three, four, existed without _people_? Christ.”

“No, Dean! This goes back to what I was saying before; it gives us something _real._ Patterns in the tide and the waves, the rate of a replicating virus, the geometry of a conventionally attractive face, the amount of tension a wood scaffolding can hold— there’s an underlying order _to_ our world, and mathematicians keep arguing–”

“Sam,” Dean said wearily. “That isn’t _our_ world. Don’t get caught up in it.”

Silence fell between them. Outside, cars passed by. Street lamps were starting to flicker on. The people in the next room were murmuring. And Dean’s fingers spun, assembled, reassembled. Just a night. Just the normal sounds of their life.

“The fancy pants can argue all they want at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy.” Dean’s mouth twisted. “But we ain’t there.”

With a _whump,_ Sam fell back onto his mattress, splayed out all of his long limbs and looked to the ceiling where faint mold was spreading. See, if he analysed that, he could calculate rate of growth, when it’d reach all the way along to the wall and inch towards his fingertips.

“Functions,” Sam said, to the air. “Let’s say mapping. One-to-one— no, actually, doesn’t have to be one-to-one—”

“Oh who _cares?_ No idea what you’re on, Sammy.”

“No, no, backtrack what I just said. Let’s map a conceptual metaphor, Dean. You’ve got two domains: source and target.” He lifted his hand up, raising the two on his fingers. “Source is what we’re getting our metaphor from, target is what we’re trying to understand. Let’s say our source domain is Business.”

“Sam,” Dean said.

“Target domain... how about we pick Love, Dean? Think that’s relevant enough for you?” Blankets rustled against Sam’s hair as he turned his head to watch his brother over the valley that spanned them. “Or is it still too ‘not part of our ass-kicking life’?”

Dean nearly put his gun down loudly, on the table, just to make a point. But he didn’t. “You damn well know it’s not.” He didn’t need to name names.

“Look at the values. ‘Partners’ in our source domain translates to ‘Lovers’ in our target domain. ‘Work for wealth’ in our source; ‘Work for happiness’ in our target; ‘Sharing work of the business’ in our source; ‘Sharing work of the relationship' in our target—”

“ _Sam,”_ Dean said, again, the warning more pointed this time.

Sam stopped; his hand fell. Then he said, “I’m not saying love is a partnership, but people think of it as one all the time. People _use_ this domain to domain mapping. ‘I put all the work into this relationship’, or ‘Our relationship doesn’t work’, or whatever else. But– there’s no... ingrained _work_ in love. There’s no–” his voice stumbled, “–need for sharing for it to exist.”

Dean didn’t know what to say, felt like the words were pressing in on him, flooding in like water, too much and all at once. He wasn’t working the firearm anymore. Sam had caught him clean with the hook. Sam. God damn Sam and his beautiful mind and his soft-edged eyes. He’d caught Dean— had caught him from day one.

“When you get a conceptual metaphor, when you try to link between these two domains like– like it’s just as simple and easy as that, you can put elements in there that really don’t tangibly exist in them at all.” Sam sat up, pulled himself up ‘til he was sitting in a reflection of his brother — leaning by the headrest — staring at the wall but not really seeing. “Like work into love. Like infinity,” he said, quietly, _into math_ unsaid, but that really wasn’t what he meant; and the tide broke over Dean in a shattering iridescence.

He put the gun down: the sound of it against the wood was just as loud as he knew it’d be, but it didn’t draw Sam’s eyes. “Hey, Sammy, _Sammy_ –”

“You think there’s nothing in our lives for _us?_ No time to sit back and think about things that aren’t going to be killing us tomorrow — and your drinking and fucking does _not count—_ ” he gritted, as Dean slipped out of bed and was standing there in the cold wishing his shirt was longer. Sam looked at him now, eyes ablaze. “—No time for introspection; no time for the things that really make the world turn, make whatever we’re living worth anything; no time for _love—”_

Dean stood there in the cold, and the ocean stretched in front him, promising everything he needed but nothing that kept his belly full, nor his blood running, nor his money coming, nor his wounds from opening when he was slashed up in a hunt.

But when he looked up and listened and the words sunk in, he hardly noticed he was leaning in and tumbling overboard in a flurry of bedsheets and kicking legs.

The water wasn’t cold.

It burned sun-hot and chased away the shadows as he kissed Sam and kissed him hard, felt soft lips give way under the sweep of his tongue.

Gave him the world; his heart — ∀ ;fuck, just– re-arranged the bounds of what his life was allowed to include; and fell under the surface, headfirst.


End file.
